I remember Smileys' by Dotty LeMieux

I remember Smileys’ bar where I met all my best boyfriends and a few of my worst, my lost loves, and one-night stands, and everyone knew everyone else. It was our living room. It was where I went to tell Ronda my puppy killed her kitten; it didn’t mean to, the kittens were all so small; she forgave me, one less mouth to feed.

It’s where you went to look for someone you couldn’t find anywhere else, and sometimes you found their car, but not them, and then you’d say—I see you spent the night at Smiley’s again.  And sometimes you’d spend the night at Smiley’s too.

It’s where I met husband number one and husband number two and in between Pool Playing Michael and poets whose names I can’t mention although they are dead, but then they were married and their wives would be in the bar too. It’s where I had late night drinks with Jerka from Hungary who was just passing through. It was where I danced, we all danced to the tinny jukebox, we bugalooed around the pool table and got angry looks when we knocked a player’s elbow; where we bought a six pack of Bud to go at last call and then we sat in the corner and drank it until Sue, the owner, threw us out.

Then we’d go across the street, 2 am hushed beach town quiet, walk down behind the grocery store to Dorinda’s house and get naked in the hot tub and gossip and flirt ‘til dawn. 

Dotty LeMieux is the author of four chapbooks, Five Angels, Five Trees Press; Let Us Not Blame Foolish Women, Tombouctou Books; The Land, Smithereens Press, and Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune, Finishing Line Press. A fifth is forthcoming from Main Street Rag in 2023. Her work has appeared in numerous print and online journals, and anthologies.  Dotty lives in Northern California, with her husband and two aging dogs, where she helps elect progressive candidates to office.